Who is an author (or two or three) you aspire to write like? What is it you admire about their work or their writing style? Are there any similarities between you and your writing role model(s)?

This question is difficult to answer, because I feel like I am significantly lacking in my knowledge of truly great authors. I don't read as much as I'd like, but here are the authors that are both my inspirations and aspirations:

Jonathan Safran Foer. I have only read his Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close novel once, but I remember curling up in a chair with it in Barnes & Noble my freshman year of college, and being amazed. Foer breaks boundaries in the way he writes, completely tearing apart the structure of the ordinary novel. There are multiple narrations, sentence fragments, odd formatting, typographic art, pictures. His work is rich, and dramatic, and real. When I get the chance, I want to read his first novel, Everything is Illuminated. He's a peach.

J.K. Rowling. Because she has such a vast imagination. I want to harness the people and places I see in my own mind and spit them up onto paper like she does, creating a world that feels so real you could touch it. I also love that she writes in third person. I wrote my novel in first person for so long, but her choice to write in third influenced me to switch over. #converted

Any author who can write short, succinct prose. I feel like I tend to babble, crafting really long and arduous sentences in my novel, even more burdensome than this one. People who can pack a punch with a short sentence are my ultimate envy. Maybe one day!

+ Well, that's a wrap! But what about you? Who is your writing role model? Also, do you fancy the new blog design? We're expanding to two columns up in this place, yo. Tell me that's not progress.

14 comments:

JK Rowling is basically my biggest inspiration. I love how she weaves everything together so intricately! Agh. Genius. I LOVE THE NEW BLOG DESIGN!!!!!!! I noticed it as soon as I hit this post. It looks fabulous!!

Thanks so much for linking up! Shamefully, I haven't read either of these authors, but I've got Harry Potter on my TBR list, and now I feel like I should add Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close! Definitely gonna add that to my metaphorical pile of books to read. :)

I never saw your previous blog design, but I ADORE this one.

Thanks again for joining us for ANI! I'm really glad I discovered your blog!

Awesome post. :) I would agree wholehearted with J.K. Rowling. I don't think I've read any of Jonathan's work, though it sounds amazing. I would say an author who inspires me is Jeffrey Overstreet. His descriptions and worlds just shimmer with imagination. It's incredible. And WOW I love your new layout. :D

I love your blog design! It's just so original and it's giving me serious blog envy.

My writing role-models would probably be Oscar Wilde, who was not afraid of pushing boundaries, and Jo Spain because I met her once and she asked me to email her and that was nice. She was nice. What a nice lady.

Oooh, Oscar Wilde. I've never read him, but my sister loves him. I need to check out The Picture of Dorian Gray; I hear it's great! Never heard of Jo Spain, but she sounds super awesome! :) I love friendly authors. What a cool person!

Wow I love how you wrote about the authors! You wrote about how much you liked a different writing style and I had to think about 'We were liars' by E.Lockhart. I've never read a book like this one, it's not just reading, it's a whole experience, I don't know how to describe that. Anyway, David Levithan is pretty cool aswell and so is this post hihi :)